Terri Schindler Schiavo is dead.
She officially died at 9:05 a.m. on Thursday, March 31, 2005. But her
death really took place on March 18, 2005 even though she had not yet
stopped breathing. On that date, Terri Schiavo began her valiant, desperate,
futile battle for life. On March 18, 2005 doctors at Woodside Hospice
in Pinellas Park, Florida removed the feeding tube from the brain-damaged
woman and initiated the death sentence imposed upon her by Pinellas
County Circuit Court Judge George S. Greer at the request of Michael
Schiavo, her estranged husband and legal guardian�death by dehydration.
To guarantee her death, Judge Greer exceeded his moral authority as
a magistrate and ordered that Terri Schiavo could have no food or water�not
even by traditional means. In doing so, he sentenced her to suffer a
death so horrific that no judge could have imposed such a sentence on
a killer and not have the sentence overturned. Yet, no other court in
this land raised a finger to to overturn his unconscionable decision.
The 7-year legal battle between Bob and Mary Schindler and Michael Schiavo
became the longest, most acrimonious court battle over a right-to-die
case in the history of the United States. At one point or another, approximately
40 judges in six state and federal courts became entangled in this case
as Terri Schiavo's life ebbed from her frail body. So did 535 members
of Congress, one governor and one president. Yet, in the end, the death
sentence imposed on an innocent woman by one local judge prevailed.

At no time ever in the past in the
history of this nation has a magistrate, in removing a terminal patient
from life support, denied that patient the right to consume nutrients
by traditional means. Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George S.
Greer exceeded his moral authority by ordering that not only could Terri
Schiavo not have nutrients by feeding tube, but that she was not allowed
to ingest liquids by mouth, either. That was tantamount to a death sentence�not
of a human vegetable, but of a human being capable of experiencing emotion...and
pain. Nevertheless, a woman who had committed no crime was sentenced
to suffer such a death�and the higher courts that should have become
her arbitrators, turned their backs on her as well. Terri Schiavo suffered
for 13 days before she went into renal failure and the toxins in her
blood poisoned her. Because the pain from that type of death is horrific,
she was finally placed on a morphine drip that slowed her respiration
and aided in ending her life. As she transitioned from life to death,
Michael Schiavo and his lawyer, George Felos, assured the spectators
outside of Woodside Hospice and the media that she was resting peacefully
and that she was experiencing no pain.

I was not at all surprised that Judge
Greer was expelled from his church. Nor was I surprised that Greer was
flooded with a virtual sea of death threats, angry emails, faxes, phone
calls and criticism from Constitutional groups, disability rights groups,
pro-life groups�and even Jesse Jackson. (Well, actually Jesse Jackson
showing up did surprise me although with all of the news cameras at
Woodside, Jackson, or someone like him, was bound to show up for the
photo op). The real tragedy of the Terri Schiavo story is that the daughter
of Bob and Mary Schindler was not a terminally ill patient. She was
not "brain dead." Granted, she was never going to walk out of Woodside
Hospice regardless how much physical therapy she received. Terri Schiavo
was a bulimic oxygen-deprived woman who suffered severe brain damage
after a fall in her home. Her crime�the crime for which she was sentenced
to death�was that she was so severely infirm and so mentally incapacitated
that she would never again be a functional member of society. Nevertheless,
according to at least one medical doctor who examined her, with rehabilitation
and speech therapy, Terri Schiavo could have become a communicative,
functional member of the Schindler family. But that would have posed
a serious dilemma for Michael Schiavo who had moved on with his life
and replaced her with a common law wife and two children born from that
union. Terri Schiavo was just so much extra baggage that no longer fit
in the world he created.

Tragically, as the end drew near,
and as the medical staff at Woodside gave the dehydrated woman scant
hours to live, Michael Schiavo, who reportedly once said to his semi-comatose
wife, "Why won't you die, bitch?" again showed his selfish contempt
for the Schindler family by refusing to allow either his wife's parents
or his brother- or sister-in-law into her room to say good-bye to Terri
in those last moments as she was passing from this life to the next.
The 13-day Schiavo death watch was divisive because a moral nation knew
that an immoral judge had taken it upon himself to play God by denying
a living person the right to basic nutrition�even by swallowing fluids
through traditional means.

In the past, judges have removed
vegetative patients from life support. Judges now have that authority
through a myriad of right-to-die laws enacted between 1990-1994. However,
any patient who was able to survive without life support were not deprived
of food and water. Probably the best known example of this was Karen
Ann Quinlan.

At around 2 a.m. on April 15, 1975
Quinlan's adoptive parents, Joe and Julia Quinlan received a call from
Newton Memorial Hospital that their 21-year old daughter, Karen Ann,
had been brought in. She was in a coma from a night of drinking vodka�after
taking Valium. When doctors determined Karen Ann's condition was irreversible,
she was transferred to St. Clare's Hospital in Denville nine days later.
After consulting with their parish priest the Quinlan's decided Karen
Ann would never want to be kept alive by artificial means. Her parents
signed a consent form authorizing the hospital to remove Karen Ann from
her respirator. Ultimately the hospital refused their request and Quinlan
v St. Clare's Hospital became the most watched right-to-die case
in the nation until the Schiavo case. While he lost in Superior Court,
Joe Quinlan successfully argued to the New Jersey Supreme Court that
his adopted daughter would not want to live as a vegetable and should
be allowed to die with dignity.

Quinlan was appointed Karen Ann's
legal guardian with power-of-attorney to act in her name. That decision
allowed him to take his daughter off of life support. From Quinlan v
St. Clare's Hospital came the Living Will that empowers people to decide
whether or not extraneous efforts should be taken to sustain their lives
should they suffer from a catastrophic, debilitating illness or injury.
Only, Karen Ann did not die. She lived until June 11, 1985, dying from
pneumonia. Karen Ann spent her last years in a hospice named after her,
founded by her mother.

Today, however, it does not matter
if you have a Living Will or not. Hospital officials in every city in
the nation urge the family members to "no code" elderly relatives who
are being admitted into the nation's medical care facilities�even if
they are diagnosed with non-terminal chronic illnesses. "No code"
denies any form of medical intervention to the patient in the event
of an emergency situation like cardiac arrest or some other form of
respiratory failure. It is the essential first step in euthanizing a
terminal patient. Increasingly, it is used to quietly dispatch chronically
ill patients whose quality of life cannot improve and who have become
a financial drain on the Medicare system and on their families.

Mary Therese Helmueller, an RN from
Minneapolis authored an article in the Catholic magazine, Homiletic,
in 1998. In the article she noted that while she was visiting in Mexico
City in February of that year, her grandmother was admitted to a local
hospital with a fracture above her left knee. According to the hospital
records she personally examined upon her return, her grandmother was
alert and oriented upon admission. But, the report added, she became
unresponsive after 48 hours, and then went into a coma. She was transferred
to a hospice two days later. Carefully tracing the events that led up
to her grandmother's coma, Helmueller discovered that her grandmother
became unresponsive after each pain medication.

She was diagnosed as having a stroke
and being in renal failure. Helmueller's grandmother died shortly after
her arrival at the hospice. The hospital charts were normal. The CATscan
was negative for stroke or obstruction. The EEG indicated no seizure
activity. All the blood work was normal. She was not in renal failure.
The only anomaly Helmueller found was the overmedication of her grandmother.
She also noticed her grandmother was listed as a "No Code" patient.

Helmueller insists her grandmother
had no terminal illnesses. Nevertheless, the hospice's admitting records
reveal that two doctors stated that she was terminally ill and would
die within six months. The first doctor, the director of the hospice,
never examined or evaluated her. Nor did he even read her chart. The
second doctor was on vacation when she was admitted. He did not return
until three days after her death. Yet, in their expert medical opinion,
she was terminal when she arrived at the hospice. (Hospices, for those
who don't know, are transitional care facilities. Those who are suffering
either from terminal illnesses or progressive debilitating chronic illnesses
are usually transferred to TC facilities which are generally referred
to as "exit treatment" facilities�referring to an exit from life. Hospice
patients usually arrive by ambulance and leave by hearse).

No one better understood what was
going on at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida than the
pro-life disability rights groups like Not Dead Yet that showed up to
stand, in solidarity, with Terri Schiavo and the Schindler family during
Terri's deathwatch. Like the rest of America, they have been watching
the alarming growth of medical euthanasia over the past decade, and
they find it troublesome that our courts are legalizing euthanasia by
judicial fiat. While the catastrophic impaired�particularly when they
are aged and infirmed�now have a court-protected right to die� with
or without a Living Will, they no longer possess an unquestionable
right to live. Not Dead Yet recently asked Congress to pass a law requiring
federal courts to review all cases where the end-of-life wishes of the
impaired person are not in writing and where family members disagree
on end-of-life decisions.

Even if such a law were written,
the courts can be expected to weigh in favor of those family members
opting for euthanasia. The federal government is increasingly faced
with a catastrophic dilemma as America grays. Too many people living
too long is now creating an unfathomable burden on the U.S. Treasury
that the US government �and the taxpayers�cannot afford.

The American Court system is increasingly
embracing the argument that beneficence prevents unnecessary suffering
for the individual and saves the family�or the State�from bearing what
could become a crushing financial obligation if the patient lingers
too long. Beneficence�a selfless act designed too spare the loved ones
of the patient from both physical and financial anguish�right-to-die
advocates argue, justifies euthanasia. Even with the best palliative
care there will always be patients for whom there will be no relief
from suffering since there are no pain killers strong enough to dull
the pain they endure daily. Right-to-die advocates maintain that since
many of these people can't even find temporary relief from the intractable
pain that is an inescapable part of their lives, terminally ill or chronically
ill patients should have an option that will allow them to escape the
pain and misery that blankets their minds like a death shroud and makes
them wonder, from day-to-day or hour-to-hour, what is the point of their
continued existence.

While euthanasia may rightly be construed
as an act of mercy for a handful of people in a handful of instances
nationwide, the American people need to very carefully consider what
they wish for when they demand the passage of "right-to-die" legislation
since the Living Will does not give those signing them more control
over their fate. It provides legal cover for its beneficiary�the medical
care facility�who has been given the power to take your life. The Living
Will does not promote well-being�except perhaps for the "well-being"
of the coffers of the government. Medicare, which foots the bill for
medical care for the aged, is facing the same types of shortfalls as
Social Security�a rapidly shrinking tax base as more and more members
of gray America becomes eligible for benefits. The question lurking
in the back of the mind of government is: at what point can Uncle Sam
no longer afford to care for chronically ill patients? At what point
does voluntary euthanasia, requested through a Living Will, become mandatory
euthanasia?

If we accept the logic that it is
morally defensible to demand that we be allowed to die to alleviate
our own needless suffering from a chronic or terminal illness or injury
that will ultimately result in our dying, then how can we reject the
notion that government is not morally justified in establishing a mandatory
criteria for doctors to follow in cases where patients are construed
to be terminal? Or, where elderly patients are admitted with chronic
medical problems that simply drain the system without any hope of the
patient's health improving?

The moral argument is a two-headed
dragon. You can't argue for the right of people to be allowed to end
their own lives by rejecting extraneous measures to keep them alive
and, in the same breath, reject the right of government to arbitrarily
decide to end lives judged to be not worth living, or which are too
much of a drain on the healthcare system to pay for the care needed
to assure your survival..

That is the dilemma facing America.
That is why America became so divided watching the life or death struggle
of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. Looming heavily in the minds of those who
believed custodial rights for Terri Schiavo should have been granted
to her parents was the frightening question of how a local Pinellas
County judge could presume to sentence to death an innocent woman on
a hearsay statement from her estranged husband who wanted her dead so
he could marry his common law wife.

Hollywood actor-director Mel Gibson,
who had been in constant contact with the Schindler family through most
of the 13-day ordeal, told Sean Hannity on Fox News that what was happening
in Pinellas Park, Florida was a modern-day crucifixion with a pro-death
agenda driving it. "It's just completely wrong to deprive this poor
woman of food and water," he said. "It's a prolonged and cruel execution.
What happened to just being a human being, you know? It's nothing more
than State-sanctioned murder. All the big guys�they all have their hands
tied up by some tinhorn judge down there. Come on. When they want to
whip a judge, they got no problem doing it. Look what they did to [Judge]
Roy Moore. So they can do it if they want. They just didn't want to.
It's a precedent that they set. We may be able to save a few Social
Security dollars later on down the track simply by pulling the plug
on the infirmed, or the disabled, or the aged. It's the inevitability
of gradualism. There is an agenda and people say, 'Well, they can't
all be in it together,' but there's no other way to explain this behavior."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay [R-TX]
condemned not only Greer, but the federal judiciary which turned a deaf
ear on the pleas of the Schindlers to intercede�if only to make certain
[a] that it actually was Terri Schhiavo's will and not Jodi Centonza's
that she die (since she did not leave a Living Will); and [b] in removing
her feeding tube based on Michael Schiavo's contention to Judge Greer
that she was a vegetable who could not swallow, that she be allowed
to have nourishment if she could swallow it on her own. Instead, Greer
ruled that not only were the feeding tubes to be removed, no one was
allowed to give her water or nourishment. Heavy-handedly, Greer sentenced
her to death for the crime of being mentally-impaired. Even if she could
swallow on her own, he denied her sustenance.

Delay warned the State and federal
judges that Congress ''...will look at an arrogant and out-of-control
judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the president.'' Delay
added that he "...never thought [he'd] see the day when a US judge stopped
feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die.''

After the Schiavo incident was televised
almost nonstop for 13 days on satellite TV, the Euthanasia Society distributed
over 60 thousand Living Wills. The only one I know of that amended a
Living Will to protect her from premature euthanasia was Michael Schiavo's
common law wife, Jodi Centonza�who suffers from narcolepsy. Centonza
amended her own Living Will to include a precaution about euthanizing
her during a deathlike narcoleptic trance that resembles an irreversible
coma. "I love Michael," Centonza told the media, "and if/when we are
married, I want a clear and lucid stipulation between a 'vegetative
state' and 'really, really tired.'" Centonza has made every effort to
get her narcolepsy "on the record" so that, in the event she dropped
into a narcoleptic sleep her husband would not be able to "litigate"
her slumber. Knowing Schiavo's penchant for discarding infirmed spouses,
I guess she doesn't want to be the next Fox News euthanasia special.

When the Netherlands enacted an euthanasia
law on November 28, 2000, Pope John Paul condemned the law which violated
the Geneva Accord of 1948. A Vatican spokesman said, "Again we find
ourselves face to face with a state law that violates natural law and
individual conscience...[that is] a grave problem of professional ethics
for the doctors who must put it into practice." Under the Dutch law,
patients are able to make a written request for euthanasia, giving their
doctors the right to use their own discretion when patients become too
physically or mentally ill to make rational decisions on their own.
Last year in the Netherlands there were over 2,500 physician assisted
suicides. How many of them, I wonder, actually wanted to go through
with it at the time their doctor arbitrarily acted upon their request?
In one case a man�a Catholic�who had been estranged from his family
for quite some time developed terminal cancer. His doctor estimated
he would die within a year or so. Knowing the pain he was going to face
down the road, he signed a consent form. Shortly thereafter, he reconciled
with his family. As the family reunification progressed, he began experiencing
some new pain that was not alleviated by his current pain medication.
His wife called the nurse who, in turn, relayed the wife's message to
the doctor. Instead of asking the patient to go to his office, the doctor
went to his home. The physician gave his patient an injection. The patient
gasped and died. The wife screamed that she had not asked the doctor
to kill her husband�who had not yet reconciled with God. Neither she
nor her husband realized that the release he signed trumped his current
desires. He gave his doctor the right to determine when he should die
and the doctor exercised that option when his patient's condition worsened.

Despite the dangers of giving the
government authority to meddle in a legalized system of euthanasia and
assisted suicide, a June 27, 1997 Washington Post survey revealed that
roughly 50% of those polled favored legalizing assisted suicide. Forty-one
percent believed the practice should remain illegal, and 9% were undecided.
Roughly 80% of those surveyed during the Schiavo-Schindler legal standoff
believed Michael Schiavo had a moral right to pull the plug on Terri
Schiavo. Those who favor assisted suicide or euthanasia do so in the
mistaken belief that being transited will assure them of a dignified
and comfortable death. There is no such thing. Death is never dignified.
Nor is death a comfortable experience. What they are really saying is
that most people fear suffering a painful death far more than they fear
dying.

However, those who favor assisted
death have not prudently weighed the pitfalls inherent with giving either
a physician or a government board unprecedented power over their life
or the lives of their loved ones. They assume because they live in a
democracy that is governed by the rule of law, that government�which
plays God with our lives anyway�will, for some strange and unfathomable
reason, not abuse the power of life and death. Even without a national
law authorizing the use of euthanasia to "protect the well-being" of
the terminally-ill, there is already a killing field in every hospital
in America. It's called the "Transitional Care Unit." That's where "No
Code" patients are taken to await death.

They may be terminally-ill, chronically-ill
or simply too old and too much of a drain on Medicare for anyone to
care. The most serious health hazard for many seniors when they are
hospitalized today is simply their age. When you are old enough, age
by itself is a terminal illness. Anything that can cause your death
within six months of diagnosis at any age may be termed a "terminal
illness." Diabetes, High blood pressure, Heart disease -- according
to the yardstick applied by Judge Greer, if you have any of those chronic
medical problems, you could be classified as having a terminal illness
and denied medical treatment or even food and water. For some unexplained
logic, medical caregivers honestly believe that their use of euthanasia�the
intentional over-sedation of patients or overdosing them with morphine
or other painkillers�is the most common and humane method used to spare
the family. The death certificates likely read "death by natural causes"
or perhaps "death from complications of..." whatever chronic illness
the patient suffers.

Today every hospital and healthcare
facility is required to ask patients if they have a Living Will. Healthcare
agencies risk losing federal funding if they do not ask. When an aged
patient does not have a living will, hospitals are required to attempt
to get them to sign a "do not resuscitate" form so their "exit care
wishes" will be respected. A sales pitch�given to the elderly�in the
form of a horror story about a parent's end time medical bills destroying
the finances of their children accompanies the form the patient has
been asked to sign. The children of the elderly patient are generally
told that Medicare and Medicaid will not pay for any extraordinary efforts
to keep their terminal or chronically-ill parents alive. If extraordinary
lifesaving procedures are requested, family members are told they, not
Medicare, will be forced to bear the cost. Since 1990 the Living Will
has been "packaged" as part of every hospital or hospice patient's "Bill
of Rights." In realty, it's a death warrant�yours. Most people believe
a Living Will places them in charge of their life�and their death. It
does not. It removes choice from their hands and places it in the hands
of bureaucrats whose job it is to cut costs�regardless of the cost.

For example, a 70-year old man who
had previously signed a Living Will suddenly found himself admitted
as an inpatient through the emergency room of his local hospital. He
was suffering from respiratory distress. He was placed on a ventilator.
As he struggled to breathe, he learned that his family was discussing
removing him from the ventilator since, they were told, Medicare would
not pay for the treatment and the most humane thing they could do for
him was to let him go.

Unable to speak but very cognizant,
the man scribbled notes to the nurses, saying "Don't take me off this
machine�I changed my mind! I want to live!" The family, however, agreed
with the doctor who felt it was stupid to waste their inheritance on
hospital bills for a man whose condition was terminal. He was removed
from the ventilator. Because he signed a Living Will, he was viewed
as incapable of making a rational decision to recant the legal document
he had previously signed in a "more lucid" moment. His wishes,
as stated in the Living Will, prevailed. A man who was not terminal
became terminal. He died.

The Hemlock Society tried to get
the nation's first euthanasia bill enacted in Ohio in 1906. It failed.
In 1967 a right-to-die bill was introduced in the Florida legislature.
It failed as well. In 1976 California passed the Natural Death Act which
gave legal standing to the Living Will and protected doctors from being
sued for refusing to treat incurable illnesses. Before the end of that
year, ten other states passed similar laws.

In 1990, the American Medical Association
adopted the position that physicians, with informed consent, could withhold
or withdraw treatment from patients who were close to death. That "position"
was pushed by the managed healthcare systems that were footing the bill
for what that industry called "wasted treatments" on people who could
not be rehabilitated.

Urged to do so by the HMO lobby,
the Democratically-controlled Bush-41 Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination
Act that forced hospitals to tell patients [a] they had a right to either
demand or reject treatments, and [b] it required all medical care facilities
to ask if the patient had a Living Will�and to urge those without them
to sign one. Medicare was already in deep trouble...and so were the
elderly who relied on the government's healthcare system since Uncle
Sam had just devised a unique cost-cutting measure. The problems with
America's healthcare system became a campaign issue in 1992 when Bill
Clinton pointed out not only the soaring costs of Medicare but the revenue
shortfalls that would likely cause healthcare rationing if the problems
were not solved.

In 1993 Bill and Hillary Clinton
went on the Living Will offensive, encouraging states to legalize them
and working class people to sign them on the pretext that it was the
only way people could protect their rights. By 1994 every state and
the District of Columbia have Living Will provisions that allow physicians
extreme latitude in dealing with terminal or chronic patients. That
same year, Oregon voters approved Measure Sixteen that would allow terminally-ill
citizens to obtain prescriptions from their doctors that would end their
lives in a "humane" and "dignified" manner. The voter referendum passed
51% to 49%. Nevertheless, an Oregon US District Court Judge issued an
injunction barring the State from activating the law, ruling that it
violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

What America witnessed taking place
in Pinellas Park, Florida between March 18 and March 30, 2005 only appeared
to be a battle between Michael Schiavo and the Schindler family. They
were simply pawns on the chess board of life. What actually transpired
was America's first naked look at the pure ugliness of State-dictated,
court enforced euthanasia. But, strangely, America watched that spectacle
through rose-colored glasses. They did not see what they should have
seen. They should have realized that the courts denied Terri Schiavo
equal protection under the law. Someone should have noticed that Circuit
Court Judge George S. Greer sentenced an innocent woman to death. Someone
should have noticed, and asked, why Greer denied Terri Schiavo sustenance
consumed by swallowing. Instead, the American public�which has been
brainwashed into believing that a Living Will is a good thing�saw Terri
Schiavo as less than human and somehow, less deserving to live. Yesterday
the victim of forced euthanasia was Terri Schiavo. Who will it be tomorrow?
Perhaps it will be...you. Have you signed a Living Will? You did? Yes,
tomorrow, it will be you.

Jon Christian Ryter is the pseudonym of a former
newspaper reporter with the Parkersburg, WV Sentinel. He authored a
syndicated newspaper column, Answers From The Bible, from the mid-1970s
until 1985. Answers From The Bible was read weekly in many suburban
markets in the United States.

Today, Jon is an advertising
executive with the Washington Times. His website, www.jonchristianryter.com
has helped him establish a network of mid-to senior-level Washington
insiders who now provide him with a steady stream of material for use
both in his books and in the investigative reports that are found on
his website.